Day 5 · 15 minutes
DeepSeek
Try a free alternative and notice the tradeoffs honestly.
~15 min read + 10 min hands-on1 Why this tool matters
DeepSeek is an open-weight model out of a Chinese AI lab. It's free to use, surprisingly capable, and genuinely fast on reasoning tasks. Today is about knowing the alternatives exist — you are now someone who can honestly evaluate whether the $20/month premium tier is worth it for your use case.
2 Walkthrough
- Go to chat.deepseek.com and sign in.
- Paste a question you have already asked ChatGPT today. Compare the two answers side by side.
- Turn on DeepThink mode for a reasoning question (e.g. a logic puzzle, a planning task).
- Notice: it shows its chain of thought. Sometimes this is illuminating; sometimes it is noise.
- Ask: What are the limitations of this model compared to ChatGPT or Claude? — and read what it says about itself.
3 Your turn
Today’s exercise
Take one work task you did with ChatGPT this week. Redo it with DeepSeek. Which answer did you actually prefer? Keep the winner as your default for that category of task.
4 Pro tip
Worth keeping
Because it is open-weight, DeepSeek can be run locally or on private infrastructure. If data privacy is a blocker to using AI at work, DeepSeek is an important part of the conversation with your IT department.
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